Celtic Style Christian Art (5th-10th
Century)

History

The evolution of Celtic
art was significantly influenced by military and political events.
By the mid-first century CE most of the Celtic lands including much of
Britain were absorbed into the Roman Empire, and only Ireland and the
north of Britain remained outside it. For most of the period the northern
frontier of the Empire in Britain was Hadrian's Wall and the area bordering
it was subject to massive Roman influence. Indeed, the Celtic tribes living
there may have been in alliance with Rome. This region seems to have played
a significant part in the development of new, partly romanized fashions
amongst the Celtic peoples of the North and West. Within the province
of Britain, Celtic culture and language
survived to some extent and it is probable that many of the great landowners
were the romanized descendants of native leaders.

Chi Rho Page, Book of Kells (c.800)

ART IN IRELAND
For facts and information about the
evolution of painting & sculpture
in Munster, Leinster, Connacht and
Ulster, see: History of Irish art.

By the fourth century, the troubles which
beset the Empire left the province in Britain vulnerable to attack by
pirates, and in Ireland, by the Picts from Scotland and by the Germanic
Saxons. The picture is very confused, however, and some of these raiders
may also have served from time to time as mercenaries defending the colony
and may have been settled in Britain for that very purpose. In 407, the
legions withdrew and about 410 the Emperor Honorius advised the Britons
to look to their own defence. This they did and it now seems clear that
a high level of romanized culture was maintained by native rulers well
into the sixth century.

Native traditions appear to have reasserted
themselves in this process and independent Celtic speaking kingdoms emerged.
Leaders from beyond Hadrian's Wall established themselves in Wales while
the Irish settled in colonies in Cornwall, Wales and Western Scotland.
The Irish kingdom of Dal Riada gradually extended its influence over most
of the highlands of Scotland. The Picts remained powerful throughout this
period and frequently proved a threat to the rich lands to the south.

REVIVAL OF MEDIEVAL ART
For details of the European arts
recovery, under Charlemagne
and Otto I-III, see:Carolingian Art (750-900)Ottonian Art (900-1050)

EVOLUTION OF THE
ARTS
For a chronological list of dates
and events in the development
of painting, sculpture, ceramics
and metalwork, please see:History of Art Timeline.
For details
of the evolution of artworks from
the Stone Age epoch, please see:Prehistoric Art Timeline.
For an outline of later styles,
see; History of Art.

Arrival of Anglo-Saxons

The rulers of southern Britain continued
to bring in and settle Germanic mercenaries to help defend their lands.
This proved to be unwise as many of the mercenaries began to seize power
for themselves and to bring reinforcements from their homelands and eventually
conquer the area that we now know as England. The conquest was gradual
and it was occasionally halted, but by the end of the sixth century the
political structure of early mediaeval times had been established. The
conquerors - the Anglo-Saxons as they were later called - probably
absorbed much of the native population. Christianity was well-established
in Roman Britain by the fifth century, but the Anglo-Saxons reintroduced
paganism to the areas which they conquered. Ireland,
which had remained outside the Roman Empire, maintained its traditional
way of life but was christianized during the fifth century by missionaries
from Britain and Gaul.

The history of Celtic art at this period
is confused but broadly speaking in fifth and sixth century Britain and
Ireland, schools of Celtic
metalworking existed based on La
Tene traditions which seem to have been preserved in a relatively
pure form in the north and west of Britain and in Ireland.

In southern Britain romanized traditions
exerted their influence and this permeated the workshops outside the colony.
Thus a modified version of the La Tene style developed.

Technological influences also came from
Roman art. Craftsmen in metalwork
began to experiment in working with silver, although tinning and silvering
may have been adopted to imitate the effect of silver which may have been
in short supply. Millefiori glass came into use. The style is best referred
to as Ultimate La Tene and, in the later sixth and seventh centuries with
the adoption of new colours in enamelling, extremely florid effects were
achieved by bronze smiths.

Ornament was dominated by trumpet scrolls,
fine spirals often designed to be seen as a reserved line of metal in
a field of red enamel and this motif is best exemplified on the escutcheens
of a series of vessels called "hanging bowls". The majority
of these bowls are from pagan Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in eastern and southern
England. Their decoration is distinctively Celtic in character and it
has often been argued that they represent booty taken by the conquerors
from the Celtic lands to the west. It is, however, perfectly possible
that many were made by British craftsmen working locally for new, Germanic
patrons. Workshops capable of producing similar material were operating
in western Britain and Ireland at this time, but finds of bowls or bowl
fragments are very rare.

In Ireland, brooches and other objects
carry variants of the early hanging-bowl style and this art appears on
at least one piece of monumental sculpture, the Mullaghmast stone, Co.
Kildare, an object which was certainly carved in the locality. After a
century or so of obscurity the Irish Church emerged into the full light
of history as strongly monastic in character. With the foundation of St.
Columba's monastery of Iona off the west coast of Scotland in 562, Irish
monks entered into a missionary phase which led them to found monasteries
widely in western Europe which in turn broadened the horizons of the homeland.
The mission of Aidan of Iona in the 630s to the ancient kingdom of Northumbria
in northern England was especially important in the later development
of insular Celtic art.

The Irish missionaries in Britain came into contact with the art of the
Anglo-Saxons, who practised a colourful animal style in metalwork. On
the Continent, the missionaries would have seen similar jewellery
amongst the Franks and Lombards. All of these enabled the monastic houses
to foster a new hybrid style of early
Christian art which, with variations, was shared by manuscript illuminators,
metalworkers and later, monumental sculptors, in northern Britain and
Ireland. In this art, Ultimate La Tene scrollwork remained a vital decorative
element, but during the seventh century, filigree, complex casting imitating
deep engraving, die-stamping of decorative foils, gilding and granulation
were also borrowed by Celtic craftsmen from the Germanic world and, with
these, they produced dazzling and highly colourful examples of illuminated
manuscripts.

The earliest great product of this style to survive is the Gospel manuscript
The Book of Durrow, painted
in the later seventh century and preserved at the monastery of Durrow,
Co. Offaly, Ireland, until the seventeenth century. Each Gospel is preceded
by a decorative "carpet" page (see example, pictured above)
- one displays interlace, another animal ornament of Germanic inspiration
while a third contains a complicated composition of trumpet scrolls and
spirals cunningly joined together to form an elaborate pattern of linked
roundels. A fourth page is composed of a pattern of crosses. The interlace
and strangely stylized Evangelist symbols were derived from Greek
art and Etruscan motifs.

The style reached maturity with the Gospels
painted at Lindisfarne, Northumbria in about 700. Here the Celtic tradition
of constructing ornament with the use of a compass is evident not only
in the Ultimate La Tene compositions but also in the animal ornaments
of its great cross-carpet page. In metalwork, the refinement of the Gospels
is matched by the great silver brooch, from Hunterston in Ayrshire, Scotland,
by the Tara Brooch fibula
from Bettystown, Co. Meath and by the door ornaments from Donore, Co.
Meath. The last two objects, housed in the National Museum of Ireland,
are both eighth century products of the Irish midlands school.

The Late La Tene ornament of the manuscript
and the metal objects when examined closely are found to be heavily influenced
by Germanic beast motifs. The spiral endings are often no longer subtly
shown bird-heads or petal-like lobes but massive snouted beast-heads,
sometimes with a blunt crest and open jaws. They are severely stylized
and often difficult to identify at first. A disc from the Donore find
bears an elaborate composition of trumpet scrolls in tinned bronze seen
as a reserve against a richly textured background. This beautiful pattern
may be compared with the sophistication of the great Chi-Rho page (pictured
above) of the Gospel book, the Book of Kells,
the great masterpiece of Irish Biblical
art, which was preserved at the nearby monastery of Kells, Co. Meath
for many centuries.

The Book of Kells owes much to the art
of Pictland and its decoration echoes a magnificent series of carved slabs
in Scotland. The latter, like the manuscript, are not dated with certainty
but many would appear to be of the eighth or ninth century. They are characterized
by animal ornament, figured scenes, often with hunting or processional
themes, and frequently with elaborate Ultimate La Tene compositions of
outstanding virtuosity. The slab from Hilton of Cadbole, Rossshire, Scotland
is an accomplished rendering of the repertoire which also includes the
inhabited vine scroll of Mediterranean origin, interlace and a series
of enigmatic symbols. The virtuosity of Pictish art can be seen also in
the metalwork from the great hoard from St. Ninian's Isle, hidden about
800 and in the carved wooden box from Birsay, Orkney.

The art of Kells has its metalwork equivalents
in Ireland, for example the great Ardagh
Chalice, Co. Limerick, and on the Derrynaflan
Chalice, Co. Tipperary, both dating to the eighth century, while there
are elaborate Ultimate La Tene compositions in stamped silver on the later
Moylough Belt Shrine
from Co Sligo, Ireland.

The interaction of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon traditions begun in the seventh
century continued into the eighth and ninth centuries and Ultimate La
Tene decoration occurs on some Anglo-Saxon monuments, for example, the
carved stone frieze of the Church of Breedon-on-the-Hill at Leicestershire,
England, and on the Gandersheim ivory casket now preserved at Braunschweig,
Germany, but originally imported from England. In the eighth and, perhaps,
early ninth century it survives in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts for example,
in the Codex Aureus now in the Royal Library, Stockholm, in the Barberini
Gospels in the Vatican Library and in the psalter, Cotton Vespasian, in
the British Library. Mediterranean influences such as the occasional use
of the vine-scroll motif on Irish sculptures were transmitted to Celtic
craftsmen via Anglo-Saxon England.

The Viking raids on Britain and Ireland began in the later eighth century
and there is no doubt that they were very disruptive. A decline in quality
of workmanship is detectable on major metalwork pieces such as the Derrynaflan
Chalice. Numerous metal objects of Irish, Scottish and Northumbrian manufacture
have been found in Viking graves in Norway and testify in part to the
destructive and negative effects of these Nordic intruders, despite the
independent contributions of Viking
art.

Irish
sculpture - in the form of the ringed High
Crosses - reaches a high standard in the later eighth and ninth centuries.
Many of the crosses are devoted to Christian scriptural themes but one
early group, probably mostly ninth century in date, is dominated by abstract
interlace ornament, Ultimate La Tene animal interlace, and key- and fret-patterns.
Pure ornament plays a major part also on the crosses with figured scenes
and frequently occurs in the form of bossed fleshy scrolls, as on the
tenth century Muiredach's Cross, Monasterboice.

The use of panels of Ultimate La Tene scrollwork
kept the tradition alive in stone well into the tenth century but in metalwork
it was already in decline and examples are very rare after 900. The Ultimate
La Tene style is entirely absent from the metalwork of the later eleventh
and twelfth centuries, and only rarely appears in stone. This change in
taste seems to have coincided with alterations in craft organization and
patronage. However, the survival of the style over such a long period
was due to the conservative spirit of the Celtic artist which encouraged
a last flowering and thus enhanced the cultural heritage of Europe.

Celtic art was the first to blossom across
all of Europe, from Ireland to the Black Sea. It differs from the art
of Antiquity in its decoration where curves of Greek, Etruscan and Roman
plant motifs predominate, in its amalgamation of naturalistic elements,
employed in imaginary combinations, and in its metamorphosis of living
or abstract subjects. The development of this tendency towards abstraction
ultimately leads to the transformation of the faces depicted on the coins
into compositions resembling those seen in modern contemporary art.

The unity of Celtic art is witnessed by
the many objects preserved in museums, which were made on the Continent
from the end of the fifth century to the end of the first century BCE,
and in the British Isles up to and including the Christian era. This unity
is explained and demonstrated in several ways. Geographically, middle
Europe, between the Nordic plains and the hilly Mediterranean regions,
has a temperate climate which favours not only the mysteries of the forest
with its powerful and fearsome animals (deer, wolves, wild boar and snakes),
but also the wealth from agriculture and stock raising, a bountiful water
supply and ample resources of iron and stone. This climate is conducive
to mists and clouds which beget changing, weird and monstrous forms.

The sharing of one language from one end of Europe to the other reflected
the common origins of the tribes that spoke it, and their works of art
were infused with the same kind of spirit, which was inclined to transform
living things into fleeting images. The Celts, the invaders who had become
settled and who were united by their language, thus revealed a unity that
was particularly propitious to artistic creation.

Celtic art, like all art, was inspired by religion. The paganism of the
Celts was somewhat different from that of the Greeks and the Romans and
it was backed by the authority of the druids, who were the guardians of
religion, writing, teaching, the calendar and culture. Their polytheism,
although less advanced than that of the Romans, manifested itself through
animal powers, various monsters and collective goddesses. Gods and demigods
were depicted only to a limited extent and in the coins this is just beginning
to be recognized.

The choice of subjects also was marked
by unity. Quadrupeds, birds, fish and reptiles, often precisely represented,
merge with plant motifs, which lend themselves to transformations. Compositions
which combined the animal and vegetal world were preferred to those depicting
the human body. In fact, there are few examples of a faithful and detailed
representation of the human body. But these subjects often combine to
form an imaginary being, sometimes monstrous, as though everything in
the world were metaphysically linked. The treatment of these subjects
is a source of bafflement for, in each case, the Celts present us with
riddles.

The materials and techniques used by the Celts also give rise to a kind
of unity. Their art, as it has come down to us in the absence of permanent
architecture, consists of hard or hardened objects: metal (iron, bronze,
gold and silver), stone, wood, leather, glass and clay. There is no painting
(except on pottery), no wax, no wickerwork and virtually no weaving. Iron
engraving and abstract sculpture in
bronze both derive from the Ancient Celts who combined the techniques
of engraving and sculpting most effectively. Their strong point was the
creation of tiny sculptures, particularly for the embossed engraving of
coinage - for which, see Celtic Coin art.

Celtic art then, is pre-eminently European.
Before the advent of Christianity, central Europe had never known any
other art which was adapted, as Celtic art was, to its geography and temperate
climate, to a people speaking the same language and expressing both a
free spirit and a propensity for transmutation and abstraction. Celtic
art also was adapted to a particular setting and to rich and precious
materials.

Possibly a book-cover, this crucifixion plaque portrays a large central
Christ with two angels above, and Stephaton and Longinus below. The clothed
nature of the crucified Christ provides an extra area for all-over decoration.
Large peltas with relief spiral motifs form a breast-plate, while angular
zig-zag and interlace pattern the skirt of Christ's robe. Triskeles, spirals
and hatching decorate the angels' wings and the outer robes of the two
figures below.

This "carpet" page is an example of the intricacy and ornateness
achieved by artists in the early eighth century. The simplicity of the
Book of Durrow "carpet" page is here forgotten as highly precise
patterns and intricately woven motifs predominate. The decoration consists
not only of Ultimate La Tene elements, but also of interlace, both ribbon
and animal, which derive from Germanic sources.

Even more elaborate than Lindesfarne Gospels,the
Book of Kells is taken to mark the high point of Celtic manuscript illumination.
In this manuscript the Chi-Rho is given a page to itself, and the decoration
consists of panels of animal or ribbon interlace, areas of Ultimate La
Tene ornament, human faces, animals, etc., all executed with the utmost
precision.

 For more about the history of Irish
culture, see: Visual Arts in Ireland.
 For more about painters and sculptors, see: Famous
Irish Artists.
 For information about the cultural history of early Christian Ireland,
see: Irish Art Guide.
 For more on illuminated manuscripts, & Celtic-style Christian
crafts, see: Homepage.